WYSIWYG Confederates?

Pardon the silence for the last week. A few unavoidable matters over the past week set posting back a bit, but let me see if I can get things moving once again…

What are WYSIWYG Confederates?

Well, in Web development, WYSIWYG is an acronym for “What you see is what you get”, and, in some ways, I believe that the acronym could apply to those who lay-on praise based on a very simple assessment of what they see on the surface. When a man, who wore a gray coat, is presented, I see far too many jump quickly in making the judgment, “my, what a gallant and brave Confederate he was.” A Confederate flag is placed on the gravesite, and justice is served… or so they think. I think I addressed my concerns about this sort of thing, to some degree, with my post about Samuel Jacob Forrer.

The same applies to what we see online. On Find-a-Grave, for example, how quickly are folks praised for their service as Confederates?

For well over a year, I’ve been compiling data for the headstones of Confederates from my home county, but, I take care in not being too hasty in making judgments in the biographical sketches. Yes, they did, in fact, wear gray, but what did that mean? Were they fighting for “the cause”, “states’ rights”, because of social/peer pressure, because they were conscripts, or… what?

I have to say, I’ve made a couple errors in my data collection. At times, it appears that a man may have served as a Confederate soldier, based on 2 or 3-part name match with someone else in the military records, but… at times, not all those name matches are true idents. When we’re talking about some 2,000 men from a single county, errors are certainly possible.

Take the case of John W. Lillard. I’ve forgotten which unit I had originally identified him with, but I believe I had him as serving in a Virginia cavalry unit. I loaded his data (just the basics… name, date of birth, date of death, headstone info, and company and number of regiment in the bio field) in February 2010, and, by December 2010, as a “memorial”/tribute, someone had posted an image of a Confederate soldier on horseback, holding a Confederate flag. The person, by placing the image as a memorial, had gone beyond the basics, and made so much more of his “service” as a Confederate soldier… without question, or without feeling a need for further inquiry, before placing emphasis with a memorial/tribute.

In January of this year, however, I received an email from a Lillard descendant who had done further investigation. In fact, John W. Lillard never wore gray, but had served in Co. G, 62nd Ohio Infantry. That’s correct… another Virginian in blue… and from an Ohio unit. Not only that, but he had applied for a pension in years after the war, after having returned to Page County, Virginia.

It’s not at all my intent to make fun of the person who placed the tribute, but rather to show how easily some make more out of something without scrutinizing what they see.

Still, is this something that is particular to Confederate soldiers? No, not at all.

Take for example, the case of Francis Perry Cave, yet another Virginian who enlisted in an Ohio unit. Some praise him for his service to the United States, with either an American flag, or an American and Confederate flag combo, thanking him for “service to his country”. His records put into question the merit of such things because, well… his service in the 66th Ohio was extremely short-lived. Not long after enlisting (or… was he a conscript?), he deserted… yes, deserted. They tracked him down in Ohio, but he was not returned to his unit. Rather, he served the balance of the war in hospital service in Ohio. So, are those who place the memorial tributes honoring him for his service after his desertion? I mean, after all, he did provide a service to the Union… but was it reluctant? Was it something that he felt proud to do? Was it something he reflected on, in years after the war, with fondness? Frankly, I think he deserted after having learned that the 66th happened to be operating in the Shenandoah Valley… his home… and he couldn’t bear the thought of returning home to fight his kin. Pure conjecture on my part, and I understand it as such, but I keep it in my back pocket as a possibility, nonetheless. Interestingly, I have it on good authority that one descendant of his thinks Cave fought for the Confederacy, and has a cavalry saber that he believes is the one he used during the war. So, the assumptions and misjudgments don’t end with a Find-a-Grave memorial. F.P. Cave’s Find-a-Grave page can be seen, here.

But, while we’re on a role, why stop now?

Let’s take F.P. Cave’s brother, Washington J.I. Cave, as yet another example. Despite what the service records say about him (and what we can clearly read between the lines), he received a Confederate veteran’s headstone (probably attributable to some descendants who may have not known better… or who just wanted a headstone to mark his grave). Wash Cave’s service in the 33rd Virginia was extremely short-lived, and once he was exempted, he skeedaddled to Ohio to take refuge until the close of the war. Yet, he’s got a couple of praisers who seem to feel that his “sacrifice” was worth mentioning, and noting with a Confederate flag… from which (reality tells us) he seems to have been trying his hardest to stay away. You can see his Find-a-Grave page, here.

We also have Southern Unionists, who, because they were identified to pre-war militia units that were activated when the war began, seem to automatically merit praise as good Confederates. Yet, I know for a fact that they were also identified by Southern Unionists Claims applicants as fellow Unionists. The first thing I would ask, when seeing someone who served in the militia, would be… “the militia was disbanded in the Spring of 1862, so, if so devoted to the Confederate “cause”, why didn’t he join another unit, and continue his service? Instead, we see various memorials associated with these people (because of service in the militia) that proclaim things like, “Son of the South, Your fight is over, Its time to rest, You did your duty, You gave your best. We Will Never Forget You,” and “Remembering and Honoring a True Southern Hero, A Confederate Soldier. Deo Vindice.”

I’ve got more on weeding-out the truth with Southern Unionists Claims applicants coming up in another post, as well as those who are identified with reserve units which were not organized until the third Confederate Conscription Act, in 1864.

In the meantime, watch those memorial tributes to Civil War soldiers in Find-a-Grave.

*It wouldn’t surprise me if, sooner or later, these memorial tributes that I mentioned above, may disappear over time… especially if those who made them see this post, and realize the error of their ways.

Pretty fascinating stuff. I suspect that for a number of folks, trolling through Find-a-Grave and posting animated GIF battle flags is seen as the beginning and end of “honoring” Civil War veterans.

Even when the veteran’s stone is presumably accurate, though, I’m increasingly dissatisfied that it does full justice to the person buried beneath it. Those stones — any stones, I suppose — don’t seem sufficient.

Not far from my home there’s a Confederate colonel moulderin’ in the grave. His plot is marked with a recent (<10 years old) standard VA-issued stone. It contains exactly the same information every other does — name, dates of birth and death, rank and CW unit. That's it, there's nothing, except maybe the rank of colonel, that would differentiate him from any other Confederate veteran.

There's nothing that would tell you he grew up here, the adopted son of a local clergyman who took him in after his parents both died on the ship they were immigranting on, and he and his younger brother arrived in a new country, completely and utterly alone.

There's nothing that would tell you that he was the first cadet appointed to West Point from the new state of Texas, his appointment sponsored by Senator Sam Houston.

There's nothing that would tell you that he played an important — and from the Confederacy's perspective, embarrassing — role in one of the more decisive actions in the Gulf.

There's nothing that would tell you that after the war, he put his engineering skills to use and spent several terms as the City Engineer for Austin.

There's nothing that would tell you that still later he became a federal employee again, serving the last years of his life as a lighthouse keeper, and in that capacity he saved a dozen or more people by providing a safe refuge for them during the 1900 Storm, the deadliest natural disaster in this country's history.

None of that's on his tombstone, and I really do wonder, after all the life he lived, whether he'd actually even want a stone that focused solely on his military service for four short years.

I know what you mean, Andy. One of my great-great grandfathers served all of 5-6 months. He did quite a bit after the war, and relatively little during, but as one of the last Confederate veterans in the county, guess where all the attention went…

Andy makes a great point, as usual, but at some point these headstones are all we know of the soldier, and even they occasionally lead to discovery of more information about them. Sometimes the headstone is the starting point in finding out everything else a man did or experienced.

While grave-hunting for stones of Civil War veterans in local cemeteries, I have found dozens of headstones, but for a few of them that has led me to finding more about their life. James M. Carr, for instance, was in a West Virginia Cavalry unit per his headstone, but after finding that stone, I was able to find the sad story about how his life ended. He lived in a little old hut “down by the river” as they might say, and one night somebody (or somebodies) broke into his hut and beat him the death with a hammer. Whoever the killers were(or was – I’ve found no records of any arrests in the murder) got away with whatever money he had left from his pension he had just picked up a few hours earlier.

One of the newspaper stories talked about his four dogs that lived with him, and how their coats were stained brown with the blood of their dead master.

Granted, there was probably much more about his life that I still have not uncovered but even that sad glimpse into how his life ended so tragically is something I only know because he had a Civil War veteran’s headstone.

Nobody’s life will ever fit on any such stone, but even if the veteran’s marker only provides a small glimpse into the deceased’s life, that’s still at least a little something keeping his memory alive, unlike many of those buried with “normal” headstones.

Of course, nobody’s life story will fit on a stone, but what bothers me (and I think Andy), is the way that one can read a stone and make more of it than the man under the stone would. It’s much like those who leave comments on Find-a-Grave. They see one thing in the man, when the field is wide open to understand a great deal more. All that “other stuff” becomes secondary, and isn’t as interesting to a great many… and, as I pointed out, including the fact that, despite wearing gray (or the headstone noting Confederate service), he may have been a Unionists, leave-aloner, or anything other than someone devoted to “the Cause.”

When I joined the SCV my search had hit a dead end as far as documentation goes until I got his CW Arkansas state pension records. It contained an document from Spartenburg Court House stating that IP Lynchs enlistment records had been destroyed during the war but he could receive his pension because they had found 3 men who would vouch for him and his service. After I got in I found his name in a book on the Kershaws Brigade in google books.
All his grave stone has is He was a Confederate Soldier.
So I can see where in many cases the water can get muddied a bit.

As veterans slowly died off, and fewer were on local county pension boards, who would/could question the legitimacy of an application? Additionally, with military records being lost or incomplete, affidavits of comrades were all the boards had to work with. I suspect most of the fraud took place after the mid 1920s. Question is, why did some of those vets wait so ling to apply? Couldn’t get approved while vets were on the board?

Mine applied back in 1905 Arkansas required a medical disablity form be filled out to start and a new one had to be filed every year. So I have Dr reports of the various problems IP Lynch had. IP was 17 when the war ended in 1865 and he moved to Arkansas got married and set to farming from 1866 till 1905.
Dr reports state he was deaf in right ear, 3 ribs had been broken and fused crooked, bad feet from Frost Bite, He also had been shot in the head by a Union sniper and had 4 teeth (2 on each side and a crushed sinus cavity. My Grandma said if he laid down flat in a bed he snored like a Freight Train.

One of my great-great grandfathers had a long list of problems, from fingers missing, to rheumatism, etc., but most of that came from his work in saw mills after the war… and of course, a horse kicking him in the head at one point didn’t do him any favors either.

… and quite to the contrary too! Who decided to opt for a CSA stone instead of USA, and why? Can’t order another stone from the government either. Let me guess… he applied for a US pension too, right? Wow.

He applied for a US pension too, right? Most definitely. Updated the page above with his pension index card. People just dont know the history when it comes to men who joined the Union Army in the South.

[…] of Virginia’s Confederate reserve units. Still, I brought it up the other day (in “WYSIWYG Confederates?”) , so I figured that I would pick-up from where I left off. Keep in mind, however, the reserves […]

[…] Now, one can look at this in two ways… from the Kansas biography, his sentiments might be read one way (Unionist), and from the simple entry of military service in the 97th Virginia Militia… if one wasn’t aware of the Kansas bio… his sentiments might be considered from yet another angle (Confederate-leaning). Therefore, there is a real need to get below the surface, and not jump right into the “what you see is what you get”/WYSIWYG mentality. […]